a jumper and a shadow card

So one interesting this I've noticed...well, I make it a point to only keep decks that I 'connect' with and can read pretty easily, and with most of my decks I can shuffle, do whatever spread or exercise strikes my fancy, interpret, usually use reversals and voila. But with some, often the ones I have a deeper liking for and connection with...well, they are 'special snowflakes'. They refuse to be read reversed. In the de la Rea's case, one and only one spread. And, I am noticing, with the Thoth...it doesn't like to be read in spreads at all. For exchanges fine, it will comply, but when I am working with it personally...I have tried numerous times to read with it in a spread and just...oh, it will give me a message, sure enough, and a GOOD one, but it will have nothing to do with the spread in mind. I know instinctively if I have to draw one or two or three cards, and really I get the best results by just shuffling, drawing, and letting it 'speak' to me as it may.

Tonight was interesting in that, in addition to the core reading (which speaks to a personal problem I'd rather not get into detail on here) of two cards, I also had a 'jumper' card that fell out not once but twice while I was shuffling, and felt obliged to use a 'shadow' card, from the bottom of the shuffled deck...both of which are concepts I generally don't hold with/do much, but which made perfect sense here, and, taken together, came to a sort of reading within a reading of their own...

So this card was the insistent jumper, and in the context of the whole reading it was rather appropriate. Kind of saw it in the 'high' position above the two main cards. Those basically referred to a Devil type issue interfering with my Science striving, an issue I was thinking about earlier in the evening (this is what I mean by random draws from Thoth tend to be SO ON POINT), and its a card that came up a few days ago, when I was feeling particularly fatalistic minded and needed a good kick in the right direction, ha.

Basically, the message here as I see it, in this queen, is that you can overcome those problems, the obstacles to your success and fulfillment. This queen actually mirrors the RWS version of Strength in some ways, with her hand on the leopard - normally a rather wild, dangerous animal but here perfectly tamed, obedient. She sits on a throne of fire, again in control of the heat, emboldened by it rather than burned. The orange and red and yellow energy in this card both focuses towards her, rising up through her from within, and radiates out from her, a crown of light illuminating her path. She holds that pine-cone staff, ready to make things grow, to create. To me, the message here is to have more confidence in your own inner passions and ambitions, in your own creativity and drive. Instead of focusing on shortcomings, on things you could have done better or areas where others handle things better than you, focus on YOURSELF. What you want, what you are capable of, how much you have accomplished in spite of some rather serious problems and obstacles. Its that creative passion that drives you, burning from the inside out. You want more from life, you want to DO something, have a positive impact, go places and see things, write something of value, and not just in small everyday ways. There are minors that have a similar message but no, here, with the queen, the bigger picture. Self-assurance, self-confident drive...and especially the image of a self-assured, confident WOMAN asserting herself, acting, striving for what she wants when so much of societal messages still have so many negative correlations and obstacles to THAT...

Below, as the shadow card, we have the Tower. A card that's been all over my life and reading this year. In truth, because it needs to be, because I still haven't really done the hard work of knocking down things that need it, of making true, major, difficult, painful, and very necessary change. A shadow card, in the background, thematic - because yes, in the short term if I harness the energy of the Queen I can mitigate some of that issue, but really...that feeling that I could be getting so much MORE out of those Science aspects of my life I so love if there wasn't that big Devil problem coloring everything, draining so much of my energy, time...it's a logical assessment. Even the Queen....in the current circumstances, channeling that means finding the energy to stay afloat. Stay afloat with difficulty, with stress and frustration, because of those IDEAS that float around in my head, because no matter how difficult other things are reading and studying and discussion still sets my mind ablaze...but if there was that Tower change, that could mean more. Those rays of light from her crown could extend so much further...

The eye of Shiva watches the destruction in this tower, knowing through the lens of eternity that it is necessary, illuminating it. Flames, like those of the Queen, from below and within but here, under the influence of Mars, they are not burning with positive passion but more aggressive than that, stronger, they cause that old stone structure, with the bars on the window, with the misery inside, to fall. Crystal-like figure are falling out, the painful tumble downward, so fraught that it is tempting to stay within that tower, but to listen to the dove, the reassurance, the glimpse of the next arcana to come if you can just hold and get through this...

It strikes me, the similarities between these: the flames from below driving the action in the whole card, the crown or the eye above radiating light, the color palette of fire, white-themed in the Queen for the positive energy and black-themed in the Tower for the necessary destruction, the darkness that must be faced, fought, dispelled. Fire for action, Mars for engagement, the Queen for accountability...yes, these two together added a very necessary layer/message in regards to the core issue described by the other two cards...